Musings on journalism, writing, politics and whatever amuses Thomas Mitchell for the nonce

‘Defrocked’ columnist misdirects criticism as usual

In a Sunday Review-Journal interview story about “defrocked” Sun columnist Jon Ralston’s efforts to launch a profitable political website, there was this exchange:

Question: About those sarcastic quote marks you put around “newspaper” when citing the Review-Journal: Do we really not print anything newsworthy?

Answer: If I’m being honest, to some extent, that’s a relic of being horrified at how (former Publisher) Sherm Frederick and (former Editor) Tom Mitchell conducted themselves during the Reid-Angle Senate race. I think they were way out of control, and I think it trickled into coverage. People thought the quote marks were funny, so I kept them. I guess I need to get over it, but that was the genesis of it. I do not hate the R-J.

I defy Ralston or anyone else to find a single sentence that I wrote prior to the election that was “way out of control.” (After the election is another story.) And I especially defy anyone to show a scintilla of evidence that the paper’s news coverage was in any way biased.

Ralston and Angle

But since Ralston brought it up, one could do well to look back at Ralston’s writings and television interviews.

Is calling a candidate crazy and dangerous, as Ralston did in one column, way out of control? “But Reid’s serpentine rhetorical peregrinations seem addled; Angle’s seem dangerous. So do we want the dotty guy or the crazy woman?”

Perhaps saying a candidate is pathological is objective reporting. “I am beginning to wonder about this seemingly pathological habit Angle has of saying she never said something when it is on tape and so easily retrieved.”

I would say calling a candidate schizophrenic might be a bit out of control. “I am not sure who that was I interviewed on ‘Face to Face’ Tuesday evening, but it was not Sharron Angle.” Ralston wrote after the primary in 2010. “At least not the Sharron Angle who existed before she was catapulted from relatively unknown former assemblywoman to perhaps the most famous Republican Senate nominee in the country …”

Later in that column he said, “So if Angle is indeed dealing with her new schizophrenia, making her a prime target, why won’t Reid debate her? My guess is he will, but only under the most favorable circumstances.”

I suppose penning a column with a fictional dialogue between a candidate and God, is fair and balanced rather than an attempt at ridicule.

He answered his own question later by writing that “she was doing what she has done the entire campaign, with her ‘Second Amendment remedies’ lunacy and her ‘domestic enemies’ echo of a deluded radio host: Play to the worst fears and visceral beliefs of voters despondent about the economy, alienated from government and looking for someone to be a repository for their bilious unease.”

Speaking of bilious, take a look at a few of his diatribes face-to-face, so to speak, with candidate Angle:

Angle is right and Ralston is wrong, as I so noted at the time. There is an Establishment Clause and a Free Exercise Clause in the First Amendment, but no Wall of Separation Clause. That phrase was first used by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, who feared Connecticut might establish a state sanctioned religion. The First Amendement at the time restrained Congress but not the states — until the passage of the 14th Amendment.

The worst of the worst was the national party taking over her talking points. They hamstrung her to the point of gasping for air. She is not the person we all saw on the TV and I wish the parties would get the (pick some of George Carlins words and fill in as needed here) ……out of the dam way so these people can say what they think from their own minds and hearts in their own words so we can make clear decisions at the ballot box.
The same thing happened to Bob Dole and many others.
This is one place the national party could learn a thing or two, let their candidates talk!
I am sick of those (George fill in again) people taking over the messages of the candidates, more and more it sounds like the adult voices in a Peanuts cartoon.

Trying to get her message though to the readers hurt you and Sherm, Tom. Thank you for trying. Thank you for not stopping.

4TH ST8

"Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact ... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to ... Democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant."